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GODWIN 



Godwin, MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT, the proto- 

 rnartyr of the Rights of Women, was born at 

 Hoxton, 27th April 1759. Of Irish extraction, 

 she was the second of six children ; her father, 

 Edward John Wollstonecraft, a drunken ne'er-do- 

 weel, who squandered 10,000, and was always 

 shifting about to Edmonton, Barking, Beverley, 

 Hoxton once more, next Laugliarne in Carmarthen- 

 shire, and Walworth. At nineteen Mary went out 

 to earn her own livelihood, and for ten years was a 

 companion at Bath, a schoolmistress at Newington 

 Green, and governess in Lord Kingsborough's family 

 at Mitchelstown, Dublin, and Bristol. Of those 

 ten years the chief events were her mother's death 

 (1780); the flight of a sister, with Mary's help, 

 from a brutal husband ( 1784 ) ; and a visit to Lisbon 

 to nurse a dear dying friend ( 1785). Then in 1788, 

 about which time she gave up church-going, she 

 turned translator and literary adviser to Johnson, 

 the London publisher, who the year before had 

 paid her ten guineas for her Thoughts on the Edu- 

 cation of Daughters. In this capacity she became 

 acquainted, not only with the literati of the day, 

 but with reformers Paine, Priestley, and the 

 painter Fuseli. That acquaintance bore twofold 

 fruit. On the one hand, in 1791, she produced her 

 Answer to Burke 's Reflections on the French Revolu- 

 tion, and in 1792 her Vindication of the Rights of 

 Woman, a book, dedicated to Talleyrand, which 

 made her both famous and infamous. On the other 

 hand her friendship for Fuseli ripened into love, 

 and ' to snap the chain of this association ' ( for 

 Fuseli was a married man ) she started alone for 

 Paris in the winter of 1792. There, as a witness 

 of the 'Terror,' she collected materials for her 

 valuable but never-finished Historical and Moral 

 Vieio of the French Revolution (vol. i. 1794); and 

 there, in April 1793, she met Captain Gilbert 

 Imlay, an American timber-merchant, the author 

 of A Topographical Description of the Western 

 Territory of North America ( 1792). In April 1794 

 at Havre she bore him a daughter, Fanny ; in 

 November 1795, after a four months' visit to 

 Scandinavia as his ' wife ' and accredited agent, 

 she tried to drown herself from Putney Bndge. 

 Imlay, whom she adored, had cruelly deserted her. 

 But soon she resumed her old tasks ; soon, in nine 

 months' time, she was living, or rather not living, 

 with Godwin, for both kept their separate lodgings 

 in Somers-town. They had first met in 1791. On 

 30th August 1797, five months after their marriage, 

 she gave birth to a daughter, Mary ; on 10th 

 September she died. In 1851 a railroad threatened 

 her willow-shaded grave in Old St Pancras' church- 

 yard, so her remains and Godwin's were removed 

 to Bournemouth. 



The Vindication, whose text is the equality of 

 the sexes, is a curious medley of genius and tur- 

 gidity, religion and over-outspokenness ; it was 

 years in advance of its age, if only in its advocacy 

 of government day-schools. We may like or dis- 

 like the writer ; we cannot but love the woman, 

 for the love that all children bore her, for her own 

 steadfast love towards her two ingrate sisters, and 

 for the loveliness, pure and pensive, of her face 

 we know it by Opie's canvas. 



Among her other writings were Original Stories for 

 Children (1791; illustrated by Blake), Letters written 

 during a Short Residence in Sioeden, Norway, and Den- 

 mark (1796), and Posthumous Works (4 vols. 1798), these 

 last comprising The Wrongs of Woman : or Maria, a 

 Fragment, and the passionate Letters to Imlay (new ed., 

 with memoir, by C. Kegan Paul, 1879). See, too, the 

 Memoirs by Godwin (1798) and Mrs Pennell (' Eminent 

 Women ' series, 1885 ). 



Godwin, WILLIAM, political writer and novel- 

 ist, was born 3d March 1756 at Wisbeach, but 

 passed his boyhood at Guestwick in Norfolk. He 



was the seventh of thirteen children. His father 

 (1723-72) was a dissenting minister, by Godwin's 

 showing a featureless precisian ; the mother, we 

 know from her letters, was a homely, good, lov- 

 able woman. After three years at Hindolveston 

 day-school, three more with a tutor at Norwich, 

 and one as usher in his former school, Godwin in 

 1773 entered Hoxton Presbyterian College ; in 1778 

 quitted it as pure a Sandemanian and Tory as he 

 had gone in. But during a five years' ministry at 

 Ware, Stowmarket, and Beaconsfield, he turned 

 Socinian and republican, and by 1787 was a 'com- 

 plete unbeliever.' Meanwhile he had taken to 

 literature, in 1783-84 writing three novels for 42, 

 a Life of Chatham, and Sketches of History, in Stx 

 Sermons, with a good deal of subsequent hack- 

 work. The French revolution gave him an opening, 

 and his Enquiry concerning Political Jiistice (2 

 vols. 4to, 1793), brought him fame and a thousand 

 guineas. It was calmly subversive of everything 

 ( law and ' marriage, the worst of all laws ' ), but it 

 preached down violence, and was deemed caviare 

 for the multitude, so its author escaped persecu- 

 tion. The Adventures of Caleb Williams (1794) 

 was designed to give ' a general review of the modes 

 of domestic and unrecorded despotism, by which 

 man becomes the destroyer of man ; ' unlike most 

 novels with a purpose, it is really a strong book, 

 one that will not be forgotten. Holcroft, Home 

 Tooke, and ten others were charged at this time 

 with high-treason ; Godwin's powerful defence of 

 them in the Morning Chronicle did much to break 

 down the charge. Holcroft was one of his oldest 

 and most intimate friends, whose circle at different 

 times included ( or excluded ) the publisher Johnson, 

 Dr Parr, Thomas Wedgwood, Coleridge, Words- 

 worth (q.v.), Mackintosh, Lamb, Hazlitt, Mrs 

 Inchbald, Mrs Opie, Mrs Siddons, Shelley, and 

 Bulwer Lytton. Through Johnson it was that 

 Godwin met Mary Wollstonecraft, and it was for 

 fear Johnson might cut off her supplies that their 

 marriage was at first kept a secret. For Godwin 

 was hard up, and hard up he continued almost to 

 the last. Why, is somewhat a mystery, for his 

 yearly expenditure in 1793-95 averaged only 120, 

 and the man who could write that memoir of his 

 dead wife, and publish the Letters to Imlay, should 

 surely at least have died rich. Still, borrowing 

 50 from Wedgwood, and going on a driving tour ; 

 sending 20 to a young protege, and touring two 

 months in Ireland, but failing to repay Ritson 

 30 ; borrowing other 100 of Wedgwood, but dis- 

 appointing Holcroft of 20 muddlement such as 

 this speaks much for itself, if little for philosophy ; 

 and besides there was Godwin's family. It was a 

 mixed one, if not very large. In 1801, after two 

 unsuccessful courtships, he married the bustling 

 widow, Mrs Clements or Clairniont, his next-door 

 neighbour, who one day had accosted him from her 

 balcony : ' Is it possible that I behold the immortal 

 Godwin?' She had two children already, and a 

 third was born of the marriage. So there were 

 poor Fanny Imlay (1794-1816), who died by her 

 own hand; Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (1797- 

 1851), who in 1816 married Shelley; Charles Clair- 

 mont ; ' Claire ' Clairmont ( 1797-1879), the mother 

 by Byron of Allegra ; and William Godwin ( 1803- 

 32), to whose posthumous novel, Transfusion, a 

 memoir was prefixed by his father. 



The last half of Godwin's long life may be briefly 

 dismissed. A bookselling business, undertaken by 

 him as ' Edward Baldwin ' in 1805, involved him for 

 years in difficulties, and in 1833 he was glad to 

 accept the sinecure post of yeoman-usher of the 

 Exchequer. His tragedy, Antonio ( 1800), was hope- 

 lessly damned ; nor were any of his later prose 

 works equal in either merit or success to Political 

 Justice and Caleb Williams. The best are St Leon 



